Health

Health is a very worrying topic in Kenya, and especially in rural areas. On the one hand, the rate of HIV/AIDS infected people is very high (getting almost to 30% in Kinango district); infrastructures are scarce, precarious or unaccessible. Public hospitals are far and few and are overloaded with too many patients for the same doctor. That’s the reason why Children of Africa got involved by means of several projects:

CONSTRUCTION OF MEDICAL DISPENSARIES

In 2011 Children of Africa got engaged in the biggest project up to that moment (with the help of Maisha Safi Onlus): the construction of a medical dispensary of 340m², provided with a dental unit, laboratory and a 75,000m³ water tank, that will serve over 5,000 patients.

In summer 2012 the construction stage was completed, and the volunteers made it to paint the whole interior, to finish building the toilets, purchase furniture, solar panels, and medical equipment, and the first doctors’house was also built right next to the dispensary.

AIDS PREVENTION PROJECTS

In 2011 Tsunza for Life Project also got started, organised bythe sociologist Anna Planas, from Barcelona. It consists of an art and poetry performance contest, where the students from Tsunza Primary were encouraged to prepare and represent poems or design posters with the main topic of AIDS prevention.

A football league also took place with the same purpose, but with the idea of attracting more public and raise their awarness on the topic. The winner were awarded with school material, medals, diplomas, tropheys and more material for the school.

In 2012, once seen the success, the project got expanded and contunued under the name of Lutsangani for Life Project, also organised by Anna Planas. On this ocasion, the three schools of the area got involved (Tsunza, Lutsangani and Dzivani) and the project mobilised more people, who could get all kinds of information about AIDS prevention with the preventive speeches that some teenagers prepared with Anna Planas, and offered in Lutsangani School during the whole morning. Everybody could also enjoy with the games and activities organised by the volunteers, the theatre performances and the joy of the day.

For 2013 the Association is already preparing and organising the third version of this project,which this time will take place in Dzivani, and therefore, it will be called Dzivani for Life.

MEDICAL CAMPS

In 2010 the first Medical Camp was organised in Tsunza by Donatella Tarasco, with the help of Doctor Joseph from Lutsangani Dispensary (neighbouring village), who came to Tsunza for the whole day and examined more than 170 people.

Apart from examining, he also took some blood tests and provided free medicines to the patients who needed them.

In 2012 a family from Llica d’Amunt, Barcelona, spent three days in Tsunza and, thanks to a fundraising event that they organised in the the highschool where they work, they could make it to call Doctor Joseph again for him to come to Tsunza and have a second Medical Camp in the new dispensary. This time he made it to examine and give medicine to more than 270 people.

OTHERS

The district hospital of Kinango often donates of mosquito nets to the Association, whose volunteers distribute them among mothers with children under 5 years old. Every summer several seminars and speeches are organised in Tsunza library, and the main topics are health, hygiene, and sexual education. Finally, many hospital expenses, surgical operations, and tests have been covered, apart from offering first aid help and medicines to all the rural villages around.